Thursday, July 06, 2006

I'm the girl on the dance floor, wanting some more...

I have a theory that you can either like Bob Dylan or you can like to dance. You can't do both. I also think the correlation is strongly negative; the more you like one, the less you like the other. Discuss.

22 Comments:

Now you're opening up a whole kettle of fish and worms. Are you really prepared to get into the whole gender thing and why boys are always more apt to be infatuated with Dylan than girls? And how boys like to dance less than girls? It's like one of those boy red flags - a boy must like Dylan, but must not talk about Dylan too much, because DANGER DANGER DANGER. Sort of like when you meet a guy who was a philosophy major in college. Ding ding ding! Alert! Cause it's like, you know, "What's he like?" "Well, he was a philosophy major." "Ohhh, a philosophy major. I get it."

P.S. I like to dance and I like Dylan. So does Anna. That means that we're like mulatto step children - nobody wants us in either club...

P.P.S. Have you noticed that I have no life now cause I'm always reading your damn blog?

I think the sole explanation for this is the marijuana factor. Because the more mj you consume the more likely you are to dig the Dylan, and the less likely you are to peel yourself from the couch and dance. The less you consume the more likely you are to want to dance and think Dylan is a bore.

Hmmm, I don't really like either. I listen to the radio, but for the most part I find music kind of bland and boring. And the only reason to dance is if you want attention and people looking at you. I never want either of those things.

And, I don't get it? What's wrong with being a philosophy major in college? Except for the fact that there's no future career in it, UNLESS you go to law school maybe.

I always thought that boys didn't like to dance because it didn't make sense from an evolutionary standpoint (http://www.lloydianaspects.co.uk/evolve/menwont.html), but then again I was almost an philosophy major in school so what do I know! Also, I have a harder time justifying liking Dylan from an evolutionary standpoint (or really any standpoint.)

I am disappointed in you. Dylan is, in my view, the greatest lyricist of our time. And his performances (both singing and guitar playing) display a more profound sense of timing (as distinct from rhythm) than anyone since Sinatra (this is not to argue that he is a great singer or guitar player, in any traditional sense. But a brilliant intuitive musician).

If you are basing your dislike on a few of the more played hits, please, for your own sake, go listen to these albums a few times:

1. Blood on the Tracks (it is heart breaking)

2. Bringing it All Back Home (see, especially, Subtarranean Homesick Blues for the timing thing I'm talking about)

3. Blonde on Blonde

4. Highway 61 revisited

Then listen to some live Dylan (the recent "official Bootleg" releases are a good place to start). It is really wonderful stuff.

I won't say anything about dancing. My views aren't nearly as strong about dancing, one way or the other, as they are about Dylan.

I reinforce Megan's hypothesis: there are only one or two Dylan songs I like and even then moreso the cover of it than the Dylan version (All Along The Watchtower is the best example) and I like to dance more than even most women do.

I wonder if the Dylan/Dance divide reflects a preference for appreciating vs partipating.

For example, Anonymous #2 sounds like an appreciator. "The finest sense of timing?" He gives us a list of albums to listen to multiple times each "for our own sake." That sounds pretty refined and tasteful.

Dancing is just fun. It physically feels good and the draw is to actually doing it.

Does anyone find Dylan fun? Does it make anyone want to physically do anything?

It may you feel something else, but possibly the opposite feelings of what you get from dancing.

You guys. COME ON!!! You must know what I mean. Either that or you, unlike me, did not have your share of encounters with chain-smoking boy-poet philosophy majors who liked to fantasize about Dylan.

In any case, I can answer Megan's question by saying that I don't dance TO Dylan. I listen to Dylan and sing and play Dylan, but not dance to Dylan. You dance to other stuff. Like "Sex Machine" and "Kung-fu Fightin" and "Purple Rain" and stuff. Anna, where's Anna? Back me up, here!

I think your theory is dead on, and the few exceptions only prove the rule.

As for me, I'll take Blood on the Tracks over the cha-cha any day. I don't think you need to smoke marijuana to enjoy it. Although I've been told hundreds of times in my life that I have a laid back personality, so maybe I'm just naturally stoned.

No no! No chain-smoking boy poet-philosophers! They write angsty short stories about how everything, even getting head, is futile and meaningless and can't pierce the grey fog of their understanding of the emptiness of the universe; then they read them in the North House living room in a pained voice. Now that I understand who Dubin means, I know why I haven't had my share of encounters with boy Dylan worshippers. I fled from them as soon as I recognized them.

Wrong. I love Dylan, I love dancing (Manic Mondays 80's dance music lists me as their #1 dancer, probably because I look funny), and of course I don't dance to Dylan.

I hated Dylan when I first heard him, but my mom was a big fan and kept playing him, so it is probably an acquired taste.

Many years ago, one line "I don't understand, you let go of my hand, and left me there facing the wall" haunted me, and I had no idea from whence it came. I mentioned this to a female friend of mine, and about a year later I got a letter from her, with all the lyrics painfully copied out for me... she had found them in a bookshop (the Coop in Boston) and couldn't afford to buy the book, but it was "I don't believe you" by BD.

DUDE. I can't believe that "Dubin" (I don't normally call her that, so I had to use the quotes. On the other hand, she really does call me Lazlo Hollyfeld) and I are the only ones feeling BOTH Dylan and electronica. God knows I'm not suggesting you DANCE to Dylan...I am more into tentatively plinking out his songs on my guitar while on a porch somewhere. The dancing I reserve for other occasions.

Also, I'm feeling you--"Dubin"--on Boys Who Talk of Dylan With Little Hearts in Their Eyes...

I should say, too, that a Boy Philosopher I used to know was the best dancer I've ever seen, and did NOT like Dylan. (In fact, he was so not into such things that as a surprise he bought me tickets to see my "favorite folk singer" James Taylor. In reality, my favorite folk singer is Cat Stevens, and when I pointed this out, he goes "What's the difference?"